If they do find another qualified candidate without any of those factors, it doesn't matter to them that you are also qualified. If they don't find another one, you're going to get a call anyway.

That only holds true in cases where an actual human is reading the résumés which have been submitted. Many businesses, particularly large multi-nationals, rely on software to reduce the pool of 100s of applicants down to a handful, not allowing even an unqualified HR person to make a call whether to move a résumé forward.
The last time I hired an assistant, the automated HR system eliminated every highly-qualified candidate that I had personally recommended for the position, leaving me with 6 candidates who had no real-world qualifications but were capable of putting the right buzzwords on their application. I ended up in a protracted fight with HR that was resolved by a VP granting permission to hire out-of-scope, just to get a qualified candidate for the job.

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, it can be supposed from the case that the plaintiff's attorneys were attempting to broaden (or modernize, depending on your viewpoint) the definition of "commercial interest" with regard to Lanham-related issues. Doing so could protect individuals from exactly this kind of abuse by non-related commercial interests.

A good point. I was looking more at "commercial interest" in a broad form, not the specifics of the Lanham Act. FWIW, I think the plaintiff's attorneys chose a Lanham Act case with the hope of broadening Lanham definitions through case law, but IANAL so mine is only an informally educated one.

Again, that is just insane. What kind of fucking retarded employer would not only judge someone based on online behavior (which mostly has nothing to do with offline behavior, as people react differently offline than online in most cases), but trust spam results and such? Not one you'd want to work for, that's who.

The kind of employer who happens to be a Fortune 100 company, for starters. The one I work for monitors internet postings (like the one I'm writing) on many social networking sites, search results, and public records for employee or potential employee activity which may damage the company's public image or leak sensitive/proprietary information. If the information that the company does so weren't considered public knowledge, I would never have considered posting here. While most companies, my employer included, use (at least) a "human" filter for the gathered data, many rely on simple algorithms or third-party search agents which may provide a number of false positives.

The unfortunate fact of business life inside the corporate suite is that your life outside does directly affect your earnings and advancement. For instance, tweeting about a hobby the boss doesn't like (dog fighting, poetry slams, line dancing, whatever) can easily take a job offer off the table or cause the HR department to start the death-spiral paper trail. Facebook photos from high school or college where the subject is involved in illicit, distasteful, or bacchanalian behavior can quickly erase a large portion of lifetime earning potential should they be found and individually identifiable.

I wholeheartedly agree. Without looking at the merits of Ms. Quixote's case, I can't imagine the tortured process this court must have gone through in determining that a modern US citizen has no commercial interest in their own name. Googling new hires/clients is commonplace, as are surreptitious background checks, which means any negative information, even when demonstrably false, can hurt a person's commercial interests.

Googling a potential new hire or business associate for background information has become too widespread for anyone to have "no commercial interest" in their name. False information, even when obviously false, can and does adversely affect anyone looking for jobs or business opportunities beyond paper hats and drivethroughs. It goes to show how out of touch this court is from the mainstream of society.

Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday September 27, 2010 @02:43PM
from the turning-the-scientific-world-on-its-head-or-maybe-not dept.

jamie passes along a humorous article at The Guardian which pokes fun at the shallow and formulaic science journalism typical of many mainstream news outlets. Quoting:
In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of 'scare quotes' to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. ... If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims. This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like 'the scientists say' to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. ... 'Basically, this is a brief soundbite,' the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. 'The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on,' she or he will continue."

An anonymous reader writes: BBC is reporting the latest confirmation that the end of the universe will be a whole lot of nothing. A team leam lead by Eric Jullo of JPL has published a paper in Science reporting the results of their detailed survey of galaxy cluster Abell 1689.

An anonymous reader writes: Cutting off a deal at the halfway point, Carlson is suing Big Blue for not living up to the outsourcing hype. IBM is denying any wrongdoing. It would be a huge black eye for IBM if Carlson wins the suit. It could also start a wave of lawsuits for disgruntled companies paying more for outsourcing than they bargained for.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The RIAA is now worried about the FCC's rulemaking concerning Net Neutrality. Specifically, they're worried that the rules might make it difficult for ISPs to filter out copyright infringement and child pornography, so they want to make sure that spying on and filtering internet traffic is okay, so long as it's being done for a good reason, even if it doesn't work correctly and blocks non-infringing content. Incidentally, the RIAA has some justification to lump child pornography and copyright infringement: after all, people might infringe upon the original cover art for the album 'Virgin Killer' which featured a naked under-aged girl in a way that some consider pornographic. The copyright on it belongs to RCA Records."

An anonymous reader writes: Yale researchers have discovered how a novel anti-depressant can take effect in hours, rather than the weeks or months usually required for most drugs currently on the market. The findings, described in the August 20 issue of the journal Science, should speed development of a safe and easy-to-administer form of the anti-depressant ketamine, which has already proven remarkably effective in treating severely depressed patients. The Yale scientists found that, in rats, ketamine not only quickly improves depression-like behaviors but actually restores connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress.

crimeandpunishment writes: What happens when an anonymous reviewer on Amazon is unmasked? When that reviewer....who wrote some pretty nasty things in book reviews....turns out to be the WIFE of an author and college professor....it turns into a pretty juicy scandal in the academic world.

An anonymous reader writes: A US federal agency is considering use of computing languages to specify legal requirements. Does the move make sense? If the proposed rule is enacted, it certainly will bring attention to Python or other permitted languages. Will that be a good thing?